New Software Review: SWAM Solo Brass Bundle by Audio Modeling

Audio Modeling takes a unique approach to virtual brass instrument development, employing their “physical modeling” design to the SWAM Solo Brass Bundle.

When mocking up big band and jazz horn arrangements, I tend to run into a number of issues with my sonic toolkit. A lot of my brass sample libraries have legato, but the scripting can be sluggish and sound fake for fast-flowing lines.

A lot of the brass libraries I own also have a lot of natural studio reverb printed into the samples as they’re recorded in big cinematic studios. This is great for a lot of applications, but when writing fast lines, the amount of reverb from each sample can overlap and cause muddiness in the mix.

Finally, a lot of my software brass instruments don’t have vibrato options, or they crossfade between samples with no vibrato to some vibrato to a lot of vibrato. This goes against the natural progression of vibrate rate and intensity, which I generally prefer to increase over the duration of a performance on a real instrument.

A lot of these issues seem to be resolved by the approach Audio Modeling has introduced with their sample-modeled SWAM instruments, so I’m excited to check out the SWAM Solo Brass Bundle to see how it performs!

Features

The SWAM engine is a proprietary technology that is based off of physical models of real world instruments. They allow you to control the expression of a virtual acoustic instrument in a way that traditional sampled instruments simply won’t allow. This isn’t to knock the quality of sampled instruments these days, but SWAM allows for possibilities like controlling vibrato speed and depth separately, growl, flutter tongue, and more, using individual MIDI CC’s.

Trumpet sounds on offer within SWAM include Flugelhorn, Flugelhorn (Eb), Trumpet (Bb), Trumpet (C), and Piccolo Trumpet. Trombones include Double Bass Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tenor Bass Trombone, Tenor Trombone, and Alto Trombone. The Horns and Tubas include Bass Tuba, Euphonium, French Horn (F), French Horn (Bb), and Tuba (Eb). While this is already a huge collection of instruments, you have access to each of them via their own standalone plugins as well, so if I wanted to play around with just the French Horn in Bb, for example, I could open its individual app without having to load up a DAW.

Considering the amount of content, it’s pretty amazing that the entire bundle only takes up about 80 MB of space. Unlike SWAM Woodwinds, SWAM Solo Brass employs a pure physical modeling design, which doesn’t require the use of samples; this is why each instrument weighs in at just 15 MB. I didn’t run into any CPU issues either, even with a fully-loaded template of every single instrument on my Macbook Pro (2019) machine.

There’s also control for Pipe Gestures so you can select between Normal, Half Valve Trans., and Half Valve, as well as No Mute, Straight Mute, HarmWah Mute, CupWah Mute, and Hand Mute. The amount of control is truly staggering. On the Timbre page in the interface, you have access to parameters including Bell Resonance, Breath Noise, Dirtiness, Mute Size, Mute Tone, and Dynamic Sensitivity. I haven’t seen most of these parameters in comparable sample-based instruments before, and they were fun to experiment with!

In Use

To be honest, I was a little concerned that the amount of control available in these samples may actually hinder the process of writing music with them. I’m happy to report this was not the case. There’s something so inspiring about the timbre of these instruments; I grew especially fond of the Trumpet. I also found the HarmWah Mute sound to be a new favorite for my writing!

You will need to have some type of MIDI controller to move CC11 (Expression) in order for these instruments to work properly, and I’ve opted to use Native Instruments’ Maschine Jam as a MIDI fader controller for this. I also set one fader up to control CC1 which allows me to introduce a little vibrato to my performances—or if I max the control out, I can create a flutter tongue performance.

To trigger staccato notes, you can simply hit the keyboard keys a little harder. I find that this approach creates some truly expressive performances, and the SWAM legato sounds are among some of the most natural I’ve ever heard.

The presets included are very unique and full of life. A lot of the sounds are fairly dry though, and I found with a little touch of a plate verb and some distortion, a whole new level of life was added. In a weird way, the dry performances reminded me of close mic’ing real brass instruments, where I need to further process them later in order to get the best results in the context of a mix. Having control over the reverb is what is key here, and I’m very happy with the sound.

It takes some time to get the SWAM instruments sounding great, but the flexibility and control you have allows for these instruments to be more usable in many different genres and contexts. On top of that, I find the instruments easily blend with one another, and stacking multiple instances can produce some very natural ensemble sounds.

Audio Modeling has also recently released a version 1.5 update of SWAM Solo Brass with significant improvements to its sound and functionality. The update features an enhanced sound engine (providing added realism), an revamped menu, improvements to MIDI mapping functionality, and customizable velocity curves which provide more accuracy and control.

To Be Critical

While these instruments are incredible for jazz and classical arrangers/programmers due to their authenticity, I think some of the sounds might not be ideal for pop, epic film, and trailer music needs. That’s not to say they can’t get loud and raunchy; I actually think they are great for mocking up dynamic big band and jazz music which can require loud performances. It just seems for some pop and film score needs, there can be an extra level of intensity and aggression needed from brass to cut through a mix, and I’m not quite getting that from SWAM Solo Brass.

Some may also not like the amount of MIDI CC editing needed to get these instruments to sound great, but still I feel they require much less editing than you’d need with comparable sample-based instruments.

Summing it Up

The SWAM Solo Brass Bundle is an incredible feat of virtual instrument development that blurs the line between engineering and musicality. The consistency between all the instruments makes for an extremely convincing library, and the deep level of control you have within each instrument is remarkable.

The SWAM Solo Brass Bundle is available now for $600 (reg. $750), and while not cheap, could be a crucial addition to your arsenal. Audio Modeling are currently developing more portable iOS versions of their SWAM instruments so that you can take the experience on-the-go. The company notes these will be released soon, with the iPad version coming first.

I highly recommend the SWAM Solo Brass Bundle if you’re looking for a set of flexible and natural sounding brass instruments that won’t take up a ton of space on your hard drive!

Matthew Wang is a guitarist, songwriter, and jingle-writer from New York City. He is actively gigging, recording, posting guitar-related videos on his YouTube channel, and recently graduated from his studies in music production at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU.

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